Health / Wellness, Law Schools, Suicide

Did Law School Bullying Contribute To A Recent Graduate's Suicide?

Law schools need to sit up and take notice of this problem.

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Welcome to the latest installment of The Struggle, a series where we examine the mental-health issues that students encounter during the oftentimes grueling law school experience. We are posting these stories because sometimes what law students really need is to know that they’re not alone in their pain. Sometimes what law students need is to know that they’ve got a friend who is willing to share not just in their triumphs, but also in their struggles. These are real messages we’ve received from real readers.

If these issues resonate with you, please reach out to us. Your stories need to be heard. You can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog. We will share your stories anonymously. You may be able to help a law student who needs to know that someone else has been there before and survived.

In June of 2017, I lost a friend to suicide a little over a year after we graduated from law school. My friend — we’ll call her Jenny — developed depression and anxiety during her last year and a half of law school.  In her words, what happened to her in law school was “traumatic.” We were both “older students,” returning to school after having children. We were also single mothers who survived abusive marriages.

Starting in Jenny’s third year of law school, she became the target of a group of high-ranking students who subjected her to ridicule and derision because they saw her as competition.  It began with ridicule on social media – something all of the students in the small school saw. Jenny also told me that members of this group moved on to physically intimidating her. She interviewed for the same federal clerkship as one of the young men in the group. When Jenny went to the judge’s chambers, the young man stayed long after his interview with the judge and physically intimidated Jenny on her way out of chambers.

A few weeks after this, I saw Jenny in the law school parking lot.  She was waiting for a tow truck to take her car away.  She didn’t tell me until after we graduated, but that day her tires had been slashed on her car.  This was the same day that the federal judge notified the young man that he didn’t get the clerkship. Jenny was convinced that the young man had done this.  By the time graduation rolled around, Jenny was a mess.  She had trouble walking across the stage at graduation.  She was afraid of several people from this group.

I also had a bad experience with this group of students, and when I asked for help from a professor he responded with ridicule, humiliation, and derision. I was partnered with one of the students from this group in a clinic environment. Even before the semester started, the student was domineering, sexist, and at one time physically intimidating.

When I brought these issues to our supervising professor, the professor ridiculed, derided, and belittled me in private. The professor knew that I was estranged from my husband, and on three separate occasions the professor said I had “baggage,” that I was “acting like a married couple about to divorce” and that I couldn’t “compartmentalize” in response to my requests for help.  In other words, I was damaged and insignificant. I was in the clinic to do the emotional labor for the clients as a middle-aged woman. I wasn’t there to learn or be a true participant in the clinic.

I stopped asking for help from the professor, but the ridicule from both my professor and the other student continued. The professor told me that I should become a middle school teacher like his wife rather than an attorney. In front of a panel of alumni, the professor referred to me as a “reproducer” for being a mother.  He laughed loudly when I said I had a clerkship after graduation in response to a question from the panel.

At another time, the professor made an “ethical dilemma” exercise for the class to discuss — it consisted of the fact that I bought my client’s hungry boyfriend a sandwich and an apple. I did this because the man had not eaten in two days. I scoured my state’s Rules of Professional Responsibility and case law, but I couldn’t find anything that implicated I had done anything unethical. I then began to question whether I could even discern when I was being unethical.

At the end of the semester, the professor had me babysit his children at the clinic dinner.  Everyone from the clinic commented on it and it furthered my humiliation.

I went almost entirely unsupervised during the semester, and my clinic partner did little to help our client.  In sum, I completed 40 hours of interviews during the semester.  I brought in two interpreters to the clinic so that I could complete my work (no one does that).  And, ultimately my clinic partner left for Hawaii, leaving me all the work to do for our client in common — the only main client he had. I spent my Christmas break at the law school frantically trying to figure out how to serve my vulnerable clients with no guidance. Nevertheless, my clinic partner was invited to go on to the advanced clinic and I was not. I felt invisible as a single, middle-aged mother.  And I had good reason to believe that it was true.

Jenny and I couldn’t change how others perceived us or their unconscious bias toward us.  We were middle-aged, single mothers, and that meant people — especially those who didn’t know us — thought of us as irresponsible and overly emotional. In reality, we were exceedingly rational and hard-working.

Jenny graduated magna cum laude.  She was on law review and in the honors society. She had an article published in a top bankruptcy law journal. She mentored other students, and she volunteered. Yet she felt broken after law school.  She was demoralized and traumatized by that group of students and she couldn’t get the experience out of her mind.  She decided not to take the bar until she recovered.  She never did.

I graduated with a 3.36, I was on law review, I had two judicial externships, I was in a clinic, and I maintained my academic scholarship by staying in the top third of the class. I’ve had two published articles (not notes).  But by the time bar study rolled around, I couldn’t function. I pondered whether it was worth going into a profession where I would be either ridiculed or invisible for being a middle-aged, single mother. I’ve spent the last year recovering from my experiences, wondering if I made a very bad miscalculation by attending law school.  I was diagnosed with severe depression and an anxiety disorder.

Jenny and I spoke at length about feeling like there was no place for us to go for help, and perhaps most damaging, we felt like no one would believe us — that this was all “part of the law school experience.”  Jenny told other people at the school about what had happened to her.  However, everyone confused the inability to prove that other students had harmed her with the inability to do something about the dynamic of this group. And if my professor had taken me seriously, he could have mentored one of the students who harmed Jenny.  The professor could have modeled appropriate professional behavior in the clinic environment.  Now there are young professionals practicing in my city who believe it is appropriate and necessary to be aggressive assholes to older women in order to get what they want.

At some point, law schools are going to have to draw a line in the sand as to what is acceptable behavior for attorneys.  I am of the belief that professors have tremendous psychological power over their students, and they should use this power to model acceptable professional behavior for students. This works.  I also feel law schools should provide a mechanism by which a student can find relief from bullying without also looking like she can’t “take the law school pressure.”  Not all law school mental health problems can be solved by anti-depressants and therapy.

As for me, I have no idea what my professor’s pedagogical goals were for me other than to drive me out of the legal profession or to have a fun at my expense.  He succeeded, but it wasn’t because I was incompetent, lazy, or unintelligent. He succeeded because I’m only human.

Most law schools have counseling and psychological services resources that students and graduates can turn to if they are in crisis or would like counseling, even after hours. If these services are not available at your school, and if you or someone you know is depressed and in need help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) or a lawyer assistance program in your state (don’t be fooled by the name; these programs also provide services to law students). Remember that you are loved, so please reach out if you need assistance, before it’s too late. Don’t become a statistic — please seek help.

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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